20. Summary of Part Four: Conferral of EU Law Individual Rights

Part four is the main part of this volume. Looking, first, at the legal sources from which individual rights may be derived, the most interesting feature was arguably the fact that written sources—primary and secondary law, as well as the Charter—are the primary source of rights, but may be supplemented by general principles of European Union law, some of which call for relatively broad policy assessments, particularly the principle of legitimate expectations. This principle is, naturally, an exception to the rule that unless one may demonstrate that one is a right holder by virtue of specific legislative or administrative measures, one does not hold rights. Although the principle of legitimate expectations is, linguistically, said to confer rights on individuals, these rights depend on a very case-specific assessment and, hence, the principle represents an approach not incomparable to more general notions of interests. Relating this to the conclusion in part three—that the rights notion in Union law is, above all, a matter of determining what should be protected interests in tort—this implies that the issue of protected interests is, in fact, more flexible than what may be suggested by the use of rights language. At times well-founded interests may so-to-say morph into rights, where they qualify as a legitimate expectation.